Anti-Zionism: 21st Century Avatar of the Longest Hatred

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In this bracing polemic, the US academic Richard Landes argues that the demonising anti-Zionism of what he calls the ‘global progressive left’ – whatever the intentions of its supporters – acts as an enriching and disseminating agent for Jihadi Jew-hatred, itself closely related to the eliminationist anti-Semitism of the Nazis.

A Tale of Two Conferences

I was recently on a panel at a Council on European Studies Conference in Philadelphia. The topic was ‘European Resilience?’ For some of us who were present, the question mark was certainly needed. Europe, especially in the post-national form of the vastly expanded European Union, seemed to us vulnerable: financial woes, stagnant growth, unassimilated immigrant populations, reviving border controls, threats of exit and attacks from a minority of triumphalist Muslims who believe that the time has now come to fulfill what they see as Islam’s cosmic destiny and dominate the world. But the event brochure suggested the organisers considered the question a rhetorical one: the cover featured a prize-fighter raising his gloves in victory.

Moreover, at a time when the French head of state is openly asking a question that fifteen years ago would have struck any listener as ludicrous – ‘Is there a future for the Jews in Europe?’ – one might have expected more panels on that subject. On the contrary, although there were over two hundred panels and more than 1000 participants, there was nothing about the Jihadi ideology that targets progressive European civil society, and with the exception of our panel, nothing either on that enemy’s main target, the Jews.

At one point, a contributor to our panel on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement called that movement ‘anti-Semitic’. The panelist next to me almost jumped out of his skin. Apparently, he found that statement offensive. He was in the wrong room, among those with whom ‘good people’ do not speak.

This reaction struck me with particular force, since I had just come from very different conference in Bloomington, Indiana. Anti-Zionism, Anti-Semitism and the Dynamics of Delegitimization had been organised by Alvin Rosenfeld’s Institute for the Study of Contemporary Anti-Semitism. Scholars had gathered to discuss the ways in which anti-Zionism replicates anti-Semitic patterns by elaborating a virulently anti-Israel narrative, and they debated the effects of this phenomenon, not just on Israelis and Arabs, but on the civic fabric of the Western societies where these ideas have gained a foothold.

Scholars familiar with the more toxic strands of Jew-hatred’s longue durée examined their surprising post-Holocaust life and their sudden re-emergence in the 21st century; how that hatred, millennium after millennium, adapts to conditions, restlessly seeking an acceptable way to Jew-bait and Jew-hate. Indeed, as one speaker pointed out, the term anti-Semitism – now, after the Holocaust, a dirty word – was first introduced as a new, scientific, acceptable form of Jew-hatred. After all, how could self-respecting enlightened persons accuse the Jews of having killed a God in whom they did not believe?

The Global Progressive Left

It would be hard to deny the proclivity of progressives, when it comes to Israel, for both passionate indignation and the toleration of hate-speech. Speaker after speaker at Bloomington detailed the ways in which the constellation of antisemitic tropes scattered over millennia, were now reappearing, after being translated into an acceptable discourse by revolutionary anti-Zionists. In meme after meme, icon of hatred after demonising cartoon after accusations of Nazi-like child-murder, the new Jew-haters – a surprising combination of Jihadis and radical progressives – weave paranoid patterns of hate around Israel.

And just behind this scarcely disguised Palestinian hate propaganda came the fuller, more paranoid, Jew-hating discourse of the Jihadis, now secularised and turning full bore on Zionism: Israelis are the true Nazis; they are so racist they believe that, as chosen people, they have a ‘license to kill’ gentiles. The same millennia-old Jewish stain, the same mark of Cain, the same angry envy – but now it was progressive world opinion that rebranded the mark, this time on the brow of the (only) Jewish nation, under the perfectly legitimate, indeed noble, cause of anti-Zionism.

In this propaganda, Israel is framed as the last and ugliest remnant of now-dépassé Western imperialist/nationalist hegemony; the designated scapegoat in a great redemptive drama of global emancipation. In reality, Israel is the only place that guarantees its citizens, including its Muslims, extensive rights and freedoms. Only in Israel can Muslims worship freely, (relatively) safe from Jihadi sectarian aggression. Israel is the only democracy in the desert of authoritarian Arab politics, so starkly displayed in today’s bloody sectarian and tribal wars.

And yet, in the minds of progressives, it is Israel that stands accused. UN bodies compulsively condemn her ‘human rights violations,’ BDS lawfare targets her, campuses and the internet ring with rhetoric and initiatives to make her a pariah, even as the Arab nations around her melt down in the kind of chaos upon which the Jihadis feed.

All this begs the following questions: why would today’s progressives openly embrace groups who publicly promote genocidal anti-Semitism? Why would they employ such vicious rhetoric with so terrible a history? Why would Judith Butler declare that Hamas and Hezbollah were part of the ‘global progressive left’? Who could be foolish enough to imagine that Jihadis bent on world conquest were anti-imperialist? And why would the Left, faced with growing Jihadi horrors of the 21st century, continue to insist that the ‘Nazi’ here is Israel?

Leftist Secular Supersessionism

From a religious point of view, this conflict revolves around competing supersessionist grand narratives: ‘Who are the true chosen people?’ Early on, Christians claimed to supersede the Jews, and Muslims claimed to supersede them both. Each supersessionist claim relies on a ‘replacement narrative’ in which the newcomer at once replaces the previous claimant as ‘chosen,’ and deprives that previous claimant of the coveted status. Replacement narratives claim a monopoly on salvation.

The syndrome today is starkest among global Jihadis: their millennial plan is to conquer the world and subject all harbis who don’t convert or die, to the subaltern status of dhimmi. The Jews, the most obdurate of all people, especially in the modern world, must be eliminated in order for Islam to triumph and flourish. Jihadis have no problem with Nazi anti-Semitic discourse because they share the paranoid genocidal version of supersessionism: exterminate the rival ‘chosen people’ or die.

It’s harder to spot the secular supersessionism of the Jihadis’s allies on the global progressive left. Most progressives insist they’re not anti-Semitic: Jews as global, diasporic citizens are okay, even great! The erratic behavior begins, however, as soon as 21st century progressives turn their attention to one of the modern world’s more remarkable creations, ‘sovereign Jews’. Here we find that, for progressives today, as for the Vatican in the 20th century, and Muslim and Christian triumphalists for more the 1400 years, sovereign Jews – i.e. currently, Israelis– are definitely not okay. Since 2000, Israelis have become the new, legitimate object of widespread contempt and hatred among Western cultural elites.

The supersessionism among progressives rests on a morally sadistic ‘secular’ replacement narrative: Israel has replaced the Nazis while the Palestinians have replaced the Holocaust-era Jews. As pleasing an historical irony as such moral inversions may seem to Nobel Prize winners, it would be dangerous to mistake it for the reality on the ground, where Israel does everything it can to avoid behaving like Nazis, while some of its enemies openly admire Nazis.

This replacement narrative offers not only freedom from Holocaust guilt; it also offers moral elevation, the chance to tower over Israel and judge her harshly. ‘Israel has lost all moral high ground,’ pronounced UN envoy Terje Roed-Larsen in response to the Jenin ‘massacre,’ when in fact, he was looking at the lowest score for civilian casualty ratios in the history of urban warfare. Deep moral disorientation ensues: a mainstream news commentator claims that the picture of 12-year-old Muhammad al Durah, caught in a crossfire, ‘symbolically replaces, erases the image of the boy in the Warsaw Ghetto.’

From these heights, European moral superpowers like Sweden, and individuals like Jostein Gaarder, sit in judgment on Israel, despising these sovereign Jews, feeding their supersessionist fantasies at the price of becoming untethered from reality. It is a small step to transforming Holocaust Commemorations into platforms for attacking Israel as the new genocidal force on the planet.

The megaphone effect

‘Leftist’ anti-Zionism has allowed internet-empowered Jihadis to spread their memes and icons of hatred the world over. Activist journalists, post-colonial scholars, feminists, ASHamed Jews, NGO activists, all reaffirm and reinforce the narrative: Blame Israel; exculpate the Palestinian ‘resistance’; conversely do not exculpate Israel and do not blame Jihadi extremism. Indeed, the more sincere the Western anti-Zionism, the better is the cover under which the hatreds spread. Progressives introduce the campus to virulent ‘human-rights’ anti-Zionism and mobilise the ensuing indignation to make Israel an international pariah.

It is common wisdom on today’s global progressive left to consider anti-Zionism as unrelated to anti-Semitism, and Islamophobia as the new anti-Semitism. The evidence presented at the Bloomington conference suggested that this is a serious misreading. In the 21st century anti–Zionism plays, mutatis mutandis, the role that anti-Semitism played in early 20th century Europe. The papers delivered at Bloomington made clear that in this current climate, being a vocal anti-Zionist, laboring to see the global humiliation or elimination of Israel, means you put wind in the sails of real-live exterminationist Jew-haters, with people who harbor paranoid, genocidal fantasies. When Leftists chant ‘We are all Hezbollah, Now!’ or ‘Muqtada al Sadr – Anti-Imperialist Solidarity!’ they encourage and empower the real 21st century avatars of the Nazi delirium, namely the triumphalist Jihadis.

Prof. Landes wrote an important article. I wonder, however, why scholars never look into Haredi anti-Zionism. The Satmars are the largest Hasidic group in the U.S. and Britain. When I was in London, nine years ago, I counted six Satmar shuls in Stamford Hill. Satmar Judaism is recognized as the gold standard of Yiddishkeit by all Haredim. The Satmars are also highly prolific. The New York Times, a few years ago, reported that a Satmar woman, at her death, left 2,000 descendants!

The Satmars publish two main (Yiddish) weeklies in New York: Der Yid and Der Blatt. For 60 years, Der Yid, every week, has been demonizing Zionism and Zionists. (The Satmars also despise goyim, like other Haredim.) For example, in recent issues, the two weeklies called Israel “medinah shel gehinom” (“country of hell”), David Ben Gurion “avi avot hatumah” (Talmudic term meaning the “epitome of impurity or filth,” and Har Herzl “har yemach shemo vezichro” (Mt. Herzl, the “mountain may his name and memory be eradicated”).
Jacob Mendlovic (Toronto)

Prof. Landes wrote an important article. I wonder, however, why scholars never look into Haredi anti-Zionism. The Satmars are the largest Hasidic group in the U.S. and Britain. When I was in London, nine years ago, I counted six Satmar shuls in Stamford Hill. Satmar Judaism is recognized as the gold standard of Yiddishkeit by all Haredim. The Satmars are also highly prolific. The New York Times, a few years ago, reported that a Satmar woman, at her death, left 2,000 descendants!

The Satmars publish two main (Yiddish) weeklies in New York: Der Yid and Der Blatt. For 60 years, Der Yid, every week, has been demonizing Zionism and Zionists. (The Satmars also despise goyim, like other Haredim.) For example, in recent issues, the two weeklies called Israel “medinah shel gehinom” (“country of hell”), David Ben Gurion “avi avot hatumah” (Talmudic term meaning the “epitome of impurity or filth,” and Har Herzl “har yemach shemo vezichro” (Mt. Herzl, the “mountain may his name and memory be eradicated”).
Jacob Mendlovic (Toronto)

(2) More on the fierce hostility against Zionism. I enjoy reading the Guardian – especially its books and literary section on Saturday – one of the world’s elite newspapers. However, when it comes to Israel, it publishes so much nonsense.

Five weeks ago, Rev. Giles Fraser published a misleading column in The Guardian about anti-Zionist Haredim He admired Haredim for “their stubborn resistance to secular homogenized modernity.” He did not understand that Haredim are not the Amish who resist modernity. Haredim use electrical appliances, travel by car and airplane, but vehemently reject the Internet, TV and movies lest they be contaminated by Gentile culture.

Similarly, they wear their peculiar clothing based on the injunction: “And ye shall not walk in the manners of the nations” (Leviticus 20:23). And they have numerous Judaic laws (Halacha) discriminating against Gentiles. I doubt that the priest would approve of that. Fraser didn’t have to travel from London to Jerusalem to observe Haredim. He could have visited Stamford Hill, north London – the largest ghetto of Haredim in Europe – where British media have reported that their schools barely teach secular subjects.

Furthermore, the Guardian so frequently publishes letters by individuals of Jews for Justice for Palestinians, or from the group as a whole. For example, on Mar 21, April 13 and May 10, the Guardian printed their letters denouncing Israel. They only number 2,000 members out of 270,000 British Jews. And they neither observe the Torah nor have any ties to the Jewish community. They are Jews in name only. The only commandment, “mitzvah,” they believe in is spreading hatred of Israeli Jews among non-Jews.

I see in today’s Guardian Giles Fraser’s obsessiveness, again attacking Israel (about refugees). Fraser thinks because he has a Jewish father and a Jewish wife, he is allowed a pass to attack Israel. Spare me Christian priests teaching ethics to the Jewish people!

Very well researched and written.
The reality is Jew hatred has been a staple of Europe for nearly 2000 years and they are not going to stop now just because the last ‘pogrom’ was so massive. Hitlers Germany may have carried it out but all of Europe turned a blind eye.
Just because there was a little lull after the 2nd world war gives me no reason to think this will not continue ad infinitum. They can change the name or disguise it how they want but we all know what it really is, even those that perpertrate it.

Perhaps, you’ve hit just that nail – the reason that the Regressive Left has targeted Israel; “sovereign Jews” is a very good descriptor. The Regressive Left expects that all the differences will dissolve. Just a decade ago, weren’t we all expecting that different continents would move towards the EU-like integration without any borders eventually? Except that, it seems one people has not only the hutzpah to demand autonomy but is prepared to fight for it? And the idea that Israel has no right to exist (or at the very least no right to exist where it exists) is the natural solution for the Regressive Left, because such a situation would once again result in Jewish statelessness, while keeping the Regressive Left’s hands blood-free…

In my lifetime, I thought I would never see a line of helpless people led down to a river and shot in the head. It was summer 1941, the Eisatzgruppen but not in the past, the present. In full color and with cheers by the murderers and their supporters, the victims were killed, without mercy; and that is what they do other Muslims.
We have entered a new age of revived hate, spread every day on the internet. Any Jew who falls into their hands almost certainly will die.
As for the left, just as they sabotaged France defending herself in 1940 and cheered the Molotov-von Ribbentrop Pact, they once again ally with brutal fascist murderers intent on destroying western civilization. Leftist morality is an oxymoron.

The notion that antisemitism is an ideological super-virus that has morphed into antizionism in the 21st century is endlessly interesting and worth investigation. However, it is insufficient, as any meta theory would be, to explain the radical left’s blithe acceptance of Islamist Jew-hatred as “untethered from reality” (nice phrase!), because it ignores demographics.(What’s could be more reality-based than math?)

Israeli Jews = 5 million
World Jewry = 12 million
World Arabs = 370 million
World Muslims – 1.5 billion

To talk about the psychological appeal of “replacement narratives” and “secular supersessionism” without acknowledging the population disparities undergirding them is to miss the elephant in the room.

This article is deceitful. Criticism of Israel is not about the Jewish people but about illegal expansions and colonization of Arab land. It’s an argument against hate toward any people, Jew or Muslim, Israeli or Palestenean. Injustice against Jews is a truth of history but no longer the present circumstances. The truth is Jews are some of the most powerful people in the world in the 21sr century. Holocaust and anti-semitism is a horrible truth of the past. Let’s look at the current state of things. All progressive liberals (and clearly I am one of them) want is for the Palestinian people to live in their land in peace and dignity, and an end to the apartheid system; fair access to their natural resources and an independent government that collects taxes that will be invested in Palestenean territory for the people.

When we were coming out of the holocaust, the left raised us up. Now that we have a sovereign Jewish nation with the temerity to survive being surrounded by enemies, we are again vilified. Must we only be allowed to suffer in order to live, or can we establish, again, our own nation to thrive in? I for one do not wish the Palestinians harm, merely peaceful co-existence. They have other ideas, and dare I say, other dictionaries to pull common words from in order to subvert their meaning. What fanciful dictionaries are being put to use these days in order to blame catastrophe on Israel in particular, and Jews in general for the problems of Arab autocrats and despots foisted upon their own peoples? And the left eats it up like so much candy. And thereby, comes the rot in their teeth. To borrow an old curse, may all their teeth fall out but one- to be permanently in pain.

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